Jim Manganello - Lead Artist
Niroshini Thambar - Associate Artist
The residency is taking place between January - March 2020
As long as humans have been around, they've been telling stories. Thorny, robust, bloody, joyous stories. During this residency, P7s at Forthview Primary School will engage in an act of collective storytelling. We will begin by looking at a fairy tale. Fairy tales have always served as a mirror through which we can look at the darkest, scariest truths in an enchanting light. And we live in dark times. We will choose a story that allows young people to connect to their gut, one that feels relevant to our contemporary times. Using the body as the primary instrument, the ensemble will begin by translating this story into a series of portraits, along the way discovering the essential elements of storytelling: clarity, impact, rhythm, focus....
We'll take a turn in the second half of the residency. Bit by bit, the young ensemble will begin to transform the classic story into a record of themselves. Through metaphor, we will incorporate the young people's own stories, their own music, their own dreams and frustrations into a short piece of theatre that is rooted in the fairy tale, but that they ultimately have authored themselves, collectively and physically. This project aims to use the classics in order to unlock the stories within the present-day ensemble.